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Papers of Bertha Jeffreys Series
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Biographical

This section documents Jeffreys's life from her childhood in the 1900s up to her nineties. The material includes records of school and undergraduate studies, and her continuing links with Northampton School for Girls. There is documentation of early testimonials, showing the high regard in which she was held, and her later honours and awards. There is a sequence of diaries 1975-1996, and a number of household, commonplace and address books. Jeffreys retained close ties with her native county of Northamptonshire and her keen interest in family and local history is recorded. It is unfortunate that there is not more evidence of her well-known musical pursuits. Photographs show Jeffreys from childhood to shortly before her death. However, the largest single component of this section is biographical material relating to her husband Sir Harold Jeffreys (1891-1989). Jeffreys devoted much of her time after his death to writing about his life and work, assisting others with biographical accounts and helping in other ways to preserve and honour his memory.

Correspondence

Jeffreys's correspondence was found in a number of separate sequences and parts of sequences, in individual folders, plastic bags and loose. Correspondence found together can include letters from family members, family friends, former students, scientific colleagues and fellow Girtonians. For ease of reference these various groups of correspondence and individual letters have been consolidated into series of correspondence arranged alphabetically and a chronological sequence. In addition there is a series of postcards which Jeffreys kept separate, and references and recommendations, again kept separately. Subjects vary widely, from family and personal news, topics in the history of science and information about individual scientists, to detailed mathematical questions. Some of the correspondence is to both Sir Harold and Lady Jeffreys (initiated before Sir Harold's death in 1989) and occasionally exchanges are begun with Sir Harold alone and then continued by Lady Jeffreys. The great bulk of the correspondence is incoming. Jeffreys's outgoing correspondence is sparsely represented by rough manuscript drafts or occasionally a typescript carbon copy. A discrete sequence of correspondence with Girtonians has been retained in section B.

Girton College Cambridge

This section documents Jeffreys's service as Director of Studies for Mathematics 1949-1969, and service on the Governing Body, including her term as Vice-Mistress 1966-1969. There is some documentation of the debates as to whether to admit men to the College. There is also material relating to the history of the College, including biographical and historical material relating to distinguished Fellows, and a little correspondence with Girtonians, chiefly former students.

History of science and other interests

This section is chiefly concerned with Jeffreys's interest in the history of science, and mathematics in particular. It is dominated by a sequence of material (notes, correspondence, offprints etc) on a large number of eminent scientists, both contemporaries of hers and historical figures. There is significant material in particular on Mary Lucy Cartwright, Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, John Arthur Gaunt, Douglas Rayner Hartree, Inge Lehmann and Barbara Mary Middlehurst. The section includes a little general material on the history of mathematics and science. Jeffreys's concern for the place of women in science is partly indicated by the high proportion of individual women scientists in the main sequence, but there is also general material on this issue, including correspondence with Joan Mason, the founder of AWISE, the Association for Women in Science and Engineering, and correspondence and papers relating to the influential 1992 White Paper on Science and Technology and the resultant 1993 report The Rising Tide. Jeffreys interests in education represented includes material relating to the teaching of mathematics in schools and the admission of men to previously all-women Colleges.

Lectures

This section is divided into two subsections. The first is teaching material for university courses at Manchester in the 1930s and Cambridge, mainly the 1940s-1950s. It includes notes for her lectures on relativity and quantum theory. The second subsection comprises public and invitation lectures. The earliest documented is a lecture on developments in quantum theory given to the Adams Society, St Johns College Cambridge, 1927 and the latest dated lecture is at the age of 90 to the British Universities Summer School in Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics, Pembroke College Cambridge, September 1993. A number of her later lectures are on figures in the history of mathematics including Emmy Noether and Augustus de Morgan.

Mathematical Association

This section covers the period 1968-1972, documenting Jeffreys's Presidency of the Mathematical Association for 1969-1970 (in succession to C.A. Coulson) and Vice-Presidency 1970-1972. There is a little administrative material but the section also includes documentation of her concerns for mathematical education and also her Presidential Address, 'An easy commerce of the old and the new'.

Publications

This section complements the research in section C, as a number of the publications documented relate to research folders and cross-references are included where appropriate. The section provides greater coverage of Jeffreys's later mathematical interests which are under-represented in section C. There is significant documentation of Methods of Mathematical Physics (Cambridge University Press), the book co-authored with her husband Harold, from the first edition of 1946 and her introduction to the volume Coulomb wave functions by A.R. Curtis (1964). However, the single largest grouping of material relates to her two short notes for the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society; 'A Q-rious tale: the origin of the Parameter Q in electromagnetism', vol 26 (1985) and 'A footnote to A Q-rious tale', vol 27 (1986). The section also includes part of what appears to be an uncompleted book on Mechanics, with D.R. Hartree, and a number of book reviews by Jeffreys for the Mathematical Gazette.

Research

This section offers patchy coverage of Jeffreys's research studies. However, there is good documentation of her most significant periods of research. There are a few notebooks from her period as a research student under R.H. Fowler in Cambridge in the mid-1920s but the bulk of the material is in the form of a series of labelled research folders organised by topic containing notes and drafts, calculations and offprints. A number of the items in the series are accompanied by later explanatory notes by Jeffreys. The series includes material from the winter semester of 1927-1928 spent in Göttingen, where she worked under Max Born and Werner Heisenberg; from the late 1920s relating to her research on polarization of atomic cores, a topic suggested to her by D.R. Hartree; work on degenerate gases in the 1930s; and on the Relativistic Self-Consistent Field from the 1930s through to the 1970s. Research material from after her marriage includes work in the 1950s on Multipole Radiation. There is only a little material illustrative of her developing interest in areas of study introduced to her by her husband, although there is additional material preserved in the archive of Sir Harold. Other miscellaneous research papers include some documentation of the work of a former student Mary Walmsley from the 1960s and early 1970s.

Visits and conferences

This section includes some fascinating memorabilia from her study visit to Georg-August Universität, Göttingen, Germany, 1927-1928 but the bulk of the material relates to two events, a Symposium on Computer Science at Girton College Cambridge, August 1969, held as part of the celebrations of the centenary of the foundation of the College, of which Jeffreys was the organiser, and the 48th International Astronomical Union Symposium on 'Rotation of the Earth', held at Morioka, Japan in May 1971 to which Jeffreys accompanied her husband. Her continued interest in developments in science is illustrated by her attendance at the age of 94 at the International Centennial Symposium on the Electron, Cambridge, September 1997.

For letters home during visits abroad, often with detailed descriptions of activities, see section J. For newspaper cuttings from Jeffrey's visit to Australia in 1959 see A221.